dildos and fadings

Aug 03, 2010 02:32

Day #13: Your favorite romantic scene

Shakespeare has so many great romantic scenes, which is why they have those silly books about "Shakespeare's Language of Love" with all of the purplest of them. I kind of hate those. BUT at any rate I'm not sure I have a single favorite -- there's the lark/nightingale dialogue in Romeo and Juliet, and Beatrice and Benedick concluding that they're "too wise to woo peaceably," and most scenes between Antony and Cleopatra (unless they're fighting, which is also a possibility).

I think my single favorite piece of romantic dialogue in Shakespeare, though, is Florizel's speech at the end of this exchange:

PERDITA

Out, alas!
You'd be so lean, that blasts of January
Would blow you through and through.
Now, my fair'st friend,
I would I had some flowers o' the spring that might
Become your time of day; and yours, and yours,
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenheads growing: O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall
From Dis's waggon! daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bight Phoebus in his strength--a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one! O, these I lack,
To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,
To strew him o'er and o'er!

FLORIZEL

What, like a corse?

PERDITA

No, like a bank for love to lie and play on;
Not like a corse; or if, not to be buried,
But quick and in mine arms. Come, take your flowers:
Methinks I play as I have seen them do
In Whitsun pastorals: sure this robe of mine
Does change my disposition.

FLORIZEL

What you do
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet.
I'ld have you do it ever: when you sing,
I'ld have you buy and sell so, so give alms,
Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs,
To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that; move still, still so,
And own no other function: each your doing,
So singular in each particular,
Crowns what you are doing in the present deed,
That all your acts are queens.

That is just -- yeah. *sigh*

Although -- now that I've thought of it, and I know everyone is going to laugh at me for invoking the R&J balcony scene, but even that's topped by Juliet's definition of love:

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep: the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.

Beautiful and mathematically accurate. What more could you ask for?

(Someone is probably going to correct me on "mathematically accurate." Whatever. ;) )

Day #1: Your favorite play
Day #2: Your favorite character
>Day #3: Your favorite hero
Day #4: Your favorite heroine
Day #5: Your favorite villain
Day #6: Your favorite villainess
Day #7: Your favorite clown
Day #8: Your favorite comedy
Day #9: Your favorite tragedy
Day #10: Your favorite history
Day #11: Your least favorite play
Day #12: Your favorite scene
Day #13: Your favorite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favorite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favorite speech
Day #18: Your favorite dialogue
Day #19: Your favorite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favorite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you've never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favorite couple
Day #27: Your favorite couplet
Day #28: Your favorite joke
Day #29: Your favorite sonnet
Day #30: Your favorite single line

i have so long keepe shepe, 30 days of shakespeare

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